The Search For One : Guess Who's Back Building Rods?

Total Score: 8.54 - EDITOR'S CHOICE AWARD!

Introduction: What do you do if a rod building legend called with the simple request of a consultation appointment the topic of which surrounds brainstorming ideas for a new series of bass rods they're looking to develop from the ground up? What do you do if this same legend and his team actually listened to your input by building an entire series of bass rods incorporating much of your input? Well, at TackleTour, that means getting our hands on the finished product, taking it into our lab for some measurements, and fishing the sticks to see if they got it right. Presenting our first official review of an Edge Rods by North Fork Composites bass rod, the 705-1, code name "The One".

Quality/Construction: Edge Rod's MagBass 705-1 is a seven foot (7'-0") long rod rated as a medium heavy power. The surface of this, and every blank in this initial series of rods is left unfinished - just the natural sanded blank. This unfinished surface is risky because if there's a blemish in the blank, there's no method to mask it from the consumer. On the other hand, it's a bold statement by the manufacturer demonstrating that they indeed have nothing to hide.

The grip is something many manufacturers have tried to implement but for whatever reason, the concept hasn't caught on. It is a clean, carbon fiber material with a matte finish. There are no pits to fill as with cork, and there's nothing to dent as with foam. The only question is, how does it handle when wet? The guides on this rod are spiral wrapped Fuji K-Series, titanium framed, SiCs. The epoxy finish around the thread wraps on our test model are very clean. This rod was near perfect from a quality control perspective with the only deduction being from the some inconsistencies in the pattern of the grip.

Introducing our long awaited look at the new Edge Rods MagBass 705-1.

Performance: Cosmetics, grip material, quality control, construction aspects all aside, the one question everyone is going to have surrounding these new rods from Gary Loomis's latest venture is how well do they perform? We've had the honor of visiting the factory and fishing with their prototypes right in the waters where they were developed, but for our own tests and evaluations, we always take finished, production models out on our own home waters.

The MagBass 705-1 is Edge Rod's reply to our Search For One.